The owners of popular music have only recently embraced downloading digital copies of their copyrighted works over electronic networks such as the internet. One popular website for doing so is http://www.apple.com/itunes/, wherein users visit the website of a music service via a personal computer (PC) or the like, manually select a song title, and download a digital version of the selected song to the PC they used to visit the website. The user then plays the songs on the PC or transfers or uploads them to a portable device such as a Rio®, iPod® or other such dedicated portable digital music player.
Dedicated portable digital music players now have the capacity to store ten thousand or more digital song files and indexing information about those songs. While users can carry essentially their entire digital song collection with them and create and edit playlists on the go, the resulting playlists are limited to only those songs stored on the dedicated portable device; such dedicated devices do not have the capability to download songs directly from the music service. That function remains with the PC or similar device having a network connection. A portable device having such a network download capability, such as a mobile stations MS having an internet browsing capability, cannot currently dedicate enough of its limited memory only to storing and indexing many thousands of songs (though technological advances may soon overcome that limitation).
Furthermore, synchronization software for at least some popular dedicated portable music devices (such as iPod® and Nomad®) delete song files from one device (e.g., the dedicated portable device) upon being synchronized with a companion device (e.g., the Mac PC) from which the song file was deleted. In other words, deleting a song file from either device leads to deleting all remaining copies of the song on either device during the next synchronization, despite the fact that the user already purchased the song. In that instance, the PC cannot serve as a viable library from which to re-upload songs to the portable device. To the inventors' knowledge, the synchronization software does not prompt a user that the only remaining copy of a particular song file is about to be deleted, and therefore constricts the user's library of song files insidiously. Each of these aspects further drives the user to maintain his/her entire library of digital music files on a portable device; the PC being used only to download songs and possibly to create and edit playlists, but not as a music file repository.
Where a mobile station is used to store and play music, the user gains the advantage of downloading new songs on the go, but loses the advantage of having his/her entire music collection with him/her. In that instance, the user must dedicate more effort to managing the songs uploaded to and stored on the MS. Specifically, the user must select the music he intends to hear over the MS, create and/or edit playlists, delete unwanted songs from the MS, and upload from the PC to the MS any songs within the new playlists (and the new playlists themselves) that are not already stored in the MS. Generally, when a user wishes to upload songs to a MS, he/she creates new playlists or selects new songs on the PC, and all songs on the MS are automatically deleted and the newly selected songs and playlists are uploaded when initiated by the user. This is so that the songs most recently selected by the user (at the PC) may be stored on the memory within the MS that remains available for music files. Synchronization software as described above would require a use to maintain a song on a playlist continuously once it was uploaded to the MS, else lose all copies of that song.
One alternative is for a user to carry two disparate devices: a MS for mobile telephony and downloading songs on the go from a music service; and a dedicated portable music player for storing and playing a larger variety of songs than would be available on the MS alone. This appears the dominant preference of consumers given the current state of available hardware and software.
The inventors surmise that neither of the above options are optimal for users who desire both personalized music and mobile telephony capability while on the go. The present invention is therefore directed at streamlining a user's ability to manage the songs and playlists stored on and played by a MS, while still retaining the advantages a MS offers in downloading new songs directly from a networked music service.